Post navigation

Yes, More on Those Cheetos (And the News May Not Be Good)

My first post on this blog contained a disturbing photo of one child’s meal in HISD: baked Flaming Hot Cheetos covered with nacho sauce, items the student purchased separately in his/her middle school cafeteria’s “a la carte” line and mixed together for his/her lunch:

I chose to lead off with this topic because I’ve long been concerned about the nutritional quality of the foods HISD offers to students for profit, in competition with the federally subsidized school meal, on the district’s a la carte lines.

Shortly after that post was published, an alarmed school board trustee contacted Brian Giles, Senior Administrator of Food Services, to express concern and obtain more information about the foods in the photograph. In his response (to which I was later given access), Giles reassured the school board trustee:

The picture features “queso” sauce made at the Food Service Support Facility and some baked snacks. These items, as well as all items approved for “a la carte” sale at schools, individually meet standards for Calories, Fat, Sugar, and Sodium as defined by the HealthierUS School Challenge. These voluntary nutrition standards exceed current standards mandated by USDA for all school districts.

Based on this representation, I told Spork Report readers the same thing in my follow up report about a la carte, i.e., that all of HISD’s a la carte foods — including these two particular items (which I had made clear in my original post were purchased in a middle school) — comply with the HealthierUS Schools Challenge (“HUSSC”) standards.

Some time later, though, I remembered that there are gold, silver and bronze standards under the HUSSC and I wondered which standard our district is meeting. But when I asked a representative of Food Services about this, now I was told:

Our elementary a la carte offerings meet the HealthierUS Schools Challenge Gold Standard. For now, at the middle and high school level, we are working with schools on an individual basis who want to make changes.

This response directly contradicted what the school board member had been told by Giles and what I had subsequently told Spork Report readers – i.e., that HISD is meeting healthier a la carte standards across the board, regardless of grade level.

Taken aback by this development, I decided to do some investigating on my own. I obtained from Frito-Lay’s website the nutritional information for the baked Flaming Hot Cheetos in the photo

and I then plugged that data into the HUSSC a la carte foods calculator. To my surprise, the baked Cheetos were rejected by the calculator for containing an excessive amount of fat:

What’s particularly disturbing here is that these baked Cheetos (at least according to my own elementary-aged child) are also sold at the elementary school level. So even where HISD is supposed to be meeting the HUSSC gold standard, the district is not in fact doing so, at least with respect to this particular product.

I raised all of the foregoing concerns with Brian Giles and he promised to have his nutrition team “re-analyze all our a la carte offerings as compared to HealthierUS School Challenge” and get back to me shortly. I’ll share what I learn here.